A score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, still matters for college admissions.

But depending on which college campus you visit and which admissions counselor you talk to, you may get varying answers as to how much it matters.

Colleges that have eschewed emphasizing SAT scores for admitting potential have done so while placing greater emphasis on high school grades, essays and teacher recommendations.

More than 800 colleges and universities, both private and public, now make reporting SAT scores optional. A recently released study looked at more than 30 of those colleges. It’s called “Defining Promise: Optional Standardized Testing Policies In American College and University Admissions,” and it contends that there is virtually no difference in the academic performance and graduation rates between students who report their standardized test scores and those who don’t.

The three-year study was released by the National Association for College Admission Counseling and led by William Hiss, a professor and former admissions director at Bates College in Maine. It said differences in GPA between test submitters and nonsubmitters were within “five one-hundredths of a point,” and in graduation rates were within “six-tenths of 1 percent.”

“By any standard, these are trivial differences,” the study states.

Stonehill College in Easton is one school that makes it optional for applicants to submit SAT scores.

Chris Lydon, Stonehill’s vice president for enrollment management and marketing, said the school instead uses a high school GPA rubric and looks at a student’s high school curriculum to forecast future academic performance.

This year, Stonehill received a little more than 6,000 applications for a class size of 700 students. Roughly 35 percent of those students did not submit scores for the SAT or the ACT — originally known as American College Testing — exams.

“Even when we required test scores, they weren’t the main driver in the process,” said Lydon, who previously worked in admissions at Providence College in Rhode Island. He was also part of the team seven years ago at Providence College that made the decision to allow optional SAT submissions.

“We found that there was relatively little difference even before we made the decision to go test-optional,” explained Raul A. Fonts, the current dean of admissions and financial aid at Providence. “We looked back and we studied it. We did it as a pilot program for four years.

“Basically, we found a minimal difference between submitters and nonsubmitters,” Fonts said. “Our argument all along was we felt that strength, quality and depth of curriculum, recalculated, is as good a predictor as SATs.”

“I don’t think it’s going away,” Fonts said. “There are still plenty of schools that use the SATs. It’s not a terrible assessment tool.

Page 2 of 4 - “But even before we went test-optional, it never drove our process. Strength of curriculum could be the thing that could make you or break you. You weren’t going to be denied admission based on test scores.”

Providence College has receives around 9,000 applications this year and will look to admit 5,500 students, Fonts said. Out of that 5,500, some 1,000 students will attend.

“Our retention rate is still 92 to 93 percent,” Fonts said. “There’s been no impact, Our graduation rate, our outcomes are with where we were before we went test-optional. Our emphasis is on the students taking good courses.”

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth spokesman John Hoey said even though UMass requires students to submit an SAT score, admissions staff look at GPA first when considering applicants.

“But I think we look at the GPA as a very strong predictor of potential student success. The SAT score has a role to play.”

Cyndie Schmeiser, the chief of assessment for the College Board, which administers the SAT, said the SAT is a “rigorously researched and designed test” and is still a reliable predictor of a student’s potential college academic success.

“The predictive validity of college entrance exams like the SAT is an essential part of the admissions equation for the vast majority of colleges and universities in this country,” Schmeiser said.

“In nearly all validity studies, high school GPA and SAT scores in combination are shown to be the best predictors of college success,” Schmeiser said, adding that “the College Board continues to advocate for a variety of factors to be considered in the admissions process and high-quality research including our own shows that neither the SAT nor high school GPA should be used alone when making admissions decisions.”

Schmeiser added that the College Board respects the decisions colleges make “about their admissions processes, and we will continue to listen to our members, evolve our programs and work to expand access to opportunity for all students.”

Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., just recently implemented the optional SAT-reporting choice for prospective students.

Students who entered last fall were the first group, explained Catherine Capolupo, the university’s vice president for enrollment management.

Capolupo said the decision came after “thoughtful consideration and research,” but at this point, “it is too early to consider their progress as a class, trends or patterns. We will be doing so in the months and years to come.”

Colleges and universities are not just looking at GPA and test scores. They are looking for a variety of other qualities in students.

Page 3 of 4 - “Every college is looking for students who are the right fit,” Lydon said. “Is the student qualified to succeed? Who are the best fits to our institutions? We are trying to fill 40 majors, so we need to populate everything.”

“We can’t have 300 biology majors and no English majors. If a student wants to be a math major, the SAT shows aptitude,” Lydon said, noting that in other cases a student may feel “a test score diminishes how they perform in classroom.”

“And doesn’t reflect the hard work that goes into grades,” he said.

“It’s not about the quantity, it’s about the depth and the quality. I think of the essay first and foremost,” Fonts said. “We’re looking at the essay. Maybe it’s an activity we really wanted — maybe a talented artist, leader, those things play out for a student who is on the fence.”

When it comes to which area to emphasize on a college application, Hoey said, “I’m not sure you can put a particular percentage of weight. You try to look entire package of student and make the best decision you can for that student.

“I think it’s been fairly consistent throughout,” Hoey said, explaining that, with the exception of some subtle changes in recent years, UMass Dartmouth’s admissions standards have remained relatively unchanged.

“I think enrollment managers and folks do make informed decisions about the right fit to the university,” Capolupo said. “We serve different groups of students. And we have to ensure their process mirrors the needs of university. Because, ultimately, we need students who are going to be successful at the university.”

“I think the message is that for students for whom standardized tests aren’t always the best way to show abilities, there are certainly plenty of choices for those students — who perform better in classroom than they perform on standardized tests,” Lydon said.

In Fall River, Kim Napolitano, the head of the guidance department at B.M.C. Durfee High School, said guidance counselors advise their students to take the SAT at least once, and may encourage them to take the ACT.

“Sometimes our students do better with that,” Napolitano said. “The ACT is a little bit longer test time for each segment.”

Napolitano said she “can’t see SAT or ACT going away 100 percent.”

However, test-optional schools “can be a benefit to our students by looking at a student’s whole academic record,” she said.

Page 4 of 4 - Even at a school where SATs are optional, they still may have a use.

For example, at Stonehill, Lydon said, after May 1, when students make their deposits and declare their intent to enroll, “we go back and ask all those students, just for advising purposes.

“You’d be surprised every year who have scores at or above our average who choose not to submit them.”